Colosseum

by Simone Sarasso

  Thank the gods.

  Verus would like to sigh but he lacks the courage.

  “Still…” Pliny has already thought of something. “I cannot offer you a future, but perhaps if I can put you on the right track, you will do alright just the same. Follow me—we have work to do!” And, before even finishing what he had to say, the young man of illustrious birth begins to walk towards the outside of the villa, with Verus hurrying along behind him. The two follow the road that leads to the gate and then down from the headland, reaching the port via a cobbled path.

  Many people greet Pliny warmly as they pass by, or offer him their condolences for the sorry fate that has befallen his uncle. At last they reach the entrance to the citadel.

  Two crewmen, or classiarii, stand guard in shining breastplates. They give a formal salute and welcome Pliny and Verus into the base of the Classis Misenensis, the senior Imperial fleet. The young nobleman asks for a certain Marcius, who arrives at a quick pace and greets the young Pliny without ceremony. The two men seem to have known each other a long time, and the old soldier has the air of a sea-wolf.

  They both avoid mentioning his uncle. In every part of the citadel, the young nobleman sees downcast eyes filled with pain. As often happens in the army, the sailors of Rome revered their commander. Maybe because Gaius Plinius Secundus was a man of science, even before he was a warrior. And he loved human beings more than he did honor, hard work, respect and all the other crap that is needed to keep a pack of low-lifes in line and ready for battle.

  Soldiers can sense some things. They grow fond of their master, just as dogs do.

  Marcius is friendly but direct: “Who have you brought me, my lord? A budding sailor?”

  Pliny would like to nod, but instead he merely shrugs: “I doubt that Rome is so short of men that it must accept just anybody…This youth comes from Britannia, the sea he carries in his heart is not that which bore you, my friend.”

  Verus gives a start. How on Earth did the young master guess where he was from after such a brief exchange? This guy is really something.

  “I’ve seen plenty of his kind,” says Marcius with a knowing nod. “First time out they puke their guts out, but they toughen up soon enough—just need to persevere.”

  “Well,” replies Pliny with a smile, “if anyone vomits on one of your ships, I assure you this lad here will clean it up in a flash. Give him a mop and the entire ship will gleam like snow in the sun. Marcius, I present you Verus, the most willing slave in all of Misenum. He has recently lost his job—but I am sure you will be able to find plenty for him to do. He is all yours…”

  Pliny does not wait for the sailor’s reply. He slaps the Briton firmly on the shoulders and walks away with his eyes to the floor, to avoid running the gauntlet of mournful looks on his way back.

  Once more Verus is left alone, on the peaceful, ash-covered seashore, amid the steadily bobbing fleet of gleaming hulls.

  Marcius scans the Briton, his eyes barely level with the boy’s chest.

  “The boss says you’re good with puke, right?”

  Verus cannot help but grin.

  Marcius smiles too, before pointing to a hut filled with flies and an unmistakable stench.

  “Then you should have no problems with the latrines. Welcome aboard, bastard.”

  The future stinks of shit and saltwater.

  All things said and done, thought Verus, my lot could have been worse.

  But as usual, he had gotten the wrong idea.

  The whole of the first week he is filled with visions of the sea. He has breathed it, touched it, feared it like a curse—given that he had never learnt to swim—and has begun to respect it. But all these hopes were in vain: the Briton who imagined he was to become a sailor has wound up as a cabin boy stuck on dry land.

  Marcius is a tough man, but he has gradually grown fond of the lad: he tasks him from sunrise to sunset, when Verus pretends to be worn out, but the truth is that the work here is nothing compared to the toil at the quarry. Or, for that matter, the drudgery at the furnace in the employ of that madman Cormac—may the gods take care of his wretched soul.

  These days, the rag has replaced the hammer as Verus’s inseparable worktool. Rag and bucket are now the pivot of his servile life, but no matter how much Marcius insists that the triremes’ decks must shine—“I want to see my own balls staring back at me, got it?”—and no matter how many hours the son of the Island is forced to spend on his knees, all in all the day’s efforts are always less demanding than they were then. For the first time in his life, Verus feels as though he is being given a rest, and he grows stronger and sharper. The sea air improves his mood and clears his lungs, ridding them of the dust that had formed a sludge during his time at the quarry.

  The lad feels reborn. He has begun to ponder his past, and even contemplate the future.

  This morning, for example, he woke up early and ran to fetch Marcius his breakfast: a couple of red mullet caught that morning and roasted on a spit before the sun had even risen. A squirt of lemon—the ones that grow in this place are sensational, Verus feels a shiver run down his spine every time he tastes the pulp—and a sprig of dill. As for drink, Marcius takes just cold water—the Romans are a pretty strange lot.

  Marcius rinses his face in the basin and is in a good mood already. He scrubs the fish energetically.

  Verus comes closer, with the curious air typical of an Indian monkey.

  “Will we go to sea today, sir?”

  For Marcius the Briton resembles a child, eager and stubborn, hungry to see the world.

  “Are you going to go on asking me every morning?” snorts the Roman, but it is evident that he has begun to enjoy having the lad around, this knucklehead of a slave.

  Verus would blush if he were able. He is not a great expert on the human species—in truth he is better with his hands than he is with words. Resigned to playing the dullard, he gives a candid reply: “Of course I am!”

  But Marcius is not annoyed by the lad’s reply, he has come to like him, but he is unaccustomed to such zeal and get-go. His men have suffered a terrible blow, morale has been plummeted five hundred fathoms since the volcano’s eruption. No one is smiling these days, that much is sure. Let alone happy to work. And yet this blockhead Briton is horrendously chipper and always rearing to go.

  “Today we’re heading out for exercises. At last you’ll see what the Eagle can do in Neptune’s kingdom of the sea.”

  Now Verus begins to dream: he envisions the heaving breakers, the foam, the coils of rope, the oarsmen’s oiled muscles, the classiario centurion barking his orders.

  Marcius’s next words tear the Briton from his reverie, hitting him with the force of a basket of severed heads: “But don’t get too used to it, boy. We’re going to Rome in a few days…The Emperor himself has summoned us. He needs my men for a special task in the Flavian Amphitheater.”

  “What’s that?” mutters Verus insolently, as he scoops up the leftovers from his master’s plate with a scrap of stolen bread. The red mullet is delicious: even the food tastes of sun in this magical Gulf.

  The officer rises to his feet and rinses his fingers in a bowl of water and vinegar. Then he slips on his tunic and sandals, without even considering shaving: Neptune does not care about things like that, he is quite happy with a sincere heart, and a few queens tied to sea cliffs now and then.

  “All in good time, boy. We can talk about it along the way. It’s a long walk to Rome.”

  Marcius steps outside and breathes in the beach air, as a modest boat steered by an old man with one eye draws up to the small wharf next to the officer’s quarters. The man signals to get on board and Marcius complies, dragging the excitable Ordovician with him: “Walk? I’d hoped we’d go to Rome by sea!”

  “I hoped, I hoped…” Marcius fishes some leaves out of the small sack hung round his neck, stuffs them into his mouth and begins to chew like a donkey. “Hope, they say, is a good breakfast…you know the rest, don’t y
ou?”

  Verus remains silent for the rest of the journey.

  The Flagship Opis looms closer by the minute.

  At the first retch Verus feels his throat burning like never before, with the second he really pukes his guts out. Marcius nudges the one-eyed old man with his elbow. His name is Cresus, and he enjoys a certain respect on board ship.

  “They told me you were a wizard with puke, isn’t that right, boy?”

  Verus throws up his breakfast as if it were water, along with yesterday’s lunch—and the dinner he consumed two years earlier at the ceremony of the sacred Drynemeton!

  The young man has underestimated the sea—a mistake he will never make again, of this he is damned sure. He is in no condition to do anything other than throw everything up, so Marcius leaves him alone on the deck while he goes to inspect the men at work.

  On the open sea everything is in constant motion: beyond the Gulf, the currents surge into one another and make the hexareme sway like a drunken vestal virgin at the February Lupercalia. The lower-ranking classiarii are hard at work winding out cordage and straining at ropes. The wind is a capricious beast, like a cat, bestowing its graces only when it sees fit. Aeolus is a bored and moody god, who can fly into a rage at any moment, and then do nothing but gently stroke at your face for days on end, when what you really need is a stiff slap to bring you back from the dead.

  And so at sea one must have oars and sails, a ship—and patience. Training is the foundation of every success and Marcius’s men take their work very seriously. Contrary to what some people might believe, there are no galley slaves. Where your life and the future of the Empire are at stake, slaves cannot be trusted. Better the expert callouses of a generation of soldiers than the muscles of half-men in chains. Liberty is a vital ingredient: at sea there is no pretending.

  A single error of judgment, the incorrect observation of a fading star in the black of the night sky, is enough for you to find yourself a thousand miles off course. Neptune’s kingdom is a place of the soul, better to get that into your head before venturing out to sea.

  Verus spits the taste of vomit from his mouth and breathes in the pride, watching the crew reef the sails: the square rig raised on the mainstay only catches the wind at its center, while the lower flaps are left sagging and inert like the untrimmed hair of a street urchin. They must be wound in, this is no game. Marcius spends a lot of time drilling the men and advising them on the correct maneuvers, as the gusts cut viciously into the immense, snow-white sheet. Once the work has been completed though, the effects are prodigious.

  At once the ship has no more need for human arms, and starts to skim across the surface of the water like an unbridled foal across the plains of Tuscia. On the prow, the waterline drops and the miracle is complete: flight without wings and without sweat, the magic of movement. Marcius climbs the mainmast, plants his behind on the mainstay and sits astride it, enjoying the spectacle. The triremes Apollo and Castor make believe they are something they are not, and never will be: enemies.

  The ships are loaded with fierce barbarians, albeit make-believe ones; Judeans or Dacians, in reality does not matter who they are supposed to be. They square up to the Romans with pure muscle power, since savages have no idea of how to harness the wind. The flagship veers hard to starboard, one-eyed Cresus is now at the helm, and it is clear even to Verus why everyone holds him in such high esteem: the man knows his stuff. The impact is enough to shake the men’s teeth and scramble their insides.

  Verus, tossed to the middle of the deck, is again overcome by the urge to throw up.

  In the same moment the troops, crammed into the center of the ship in attack formation, raise the war cry that echoes around half the world: “Rome or die!”

  Boarding hooks, planks anchored with curved nails. And then the impact. Deafening, resonant, virile.

  It is only an exercise, but the classiarii pull no punches. They are careful not to stab anyone, but if a couple of noses get broken or a few ribs end up snapped, it is no big deal.

  War is not a girls’ game.

  Heads are butted, faces are punched, knees and elbows push the enemy overboard in the heat of battle.

  A fair few end up tumbling over the parapet and into the crystal-clear water—breastplate, shield, sandals and all. The auxiliaries are careful not to let anybody drown: they toss ropes with the precision of Diana planting an arrow between the eyes of an unruly fawn. And indeed nobody does drown. Those who panic are reeled in with an ounce or two of water in their lungs. The fight is over in the blink of an eye.

  Rome wins without breaking a sweat.

  Rome always wins.

  The rest of the day is spent putting the ships back in order, feeding the arms that will take everyone home, furling the white, and bidding farewell to the blue.

  When they reach port, Verus feels a little better.

  He had thought the sea was like a plaything, and instead he has discovered it is more like life: bitter and unpredictable.

  His stomach has improved, thanks to the mug of grappa and honey he downed on Marcius’s insistence.

  “Going to sea sober is the worst way to piss off Neptune! Never forget it, boy.”

  Verus is filled with curiosity and fear. He is a little drunk. He thinks only of the journey to come, even if he is a little sorry to leave the sea so soon. He is grateful to Marcius, Pliny, and even to Demetrius, who obligingly left a vacancy by getting roasted to death at Vesuvius.

  “You are the lord of the wind!” says Verus to the officer, pronouncing the words carefully.

  “That’s exactly why Emperor Titus wants me in Rome…”

  Just hearing that name, Verus feels a jolt run through his body. For a moment his dreams merge with reality, images of muscles, mud and sand quench the longing within him.

  The unsayable word, freedom, begins to rhyme with glory, and his imagination knows no limit. But the Briton’s head is so filled with doubts that it could burst from one moment to the next: “Do you want to tell me now what we are going to do in the Eternal City?”

  Marcius passes a hand across his rugged chin. He will need to shave as soon as the sun rises: they are going to see the master of the universe, and one does not turn up at his court looking like a brown bear after a night on the town.

  A slap on the boy’s shoulders and a smile to seduce the Queen of Sheba: “What a question, boy! To unfurl the greatest velarium in the world, what else?”

  “Velarium? What on Earth’s a velarium?” Verus’s voice is as measured as his gait.

  The caravan has been traveling for three days. Only twelve more miles now, and Marcius’s band of warriors quickens it step.

  “This is the third time I’ve explained it to you since we left! Damned Briton, you’ll age me by two lustra if we carry on like this: I’ll arrive at court grayer than a Pontus mule.”

  Marcius passes Verus the flask of spiced wine. He asked him to hang onto it, but every time they stop to take a piss the youth steals a sneaky swig from it. Meaning that he is now quite tipsy and a damned sight more stubborn than usual: “Come on, what does it cost you?”

  Marcius swallows another mouthful of the aromatic liquid, wipes his mouth with a hairy wrist and breathes deeply.

  “Right, what does it cost me? At a rough guess, a barrelful of good wine. And I always thought the gods had a bit of a soft spot for those who devote their lives to the sea…”

  “You were saying, velarium…” Verus will not relent.

  The hills are now in sight, the distance to them halved by their eager advance.

  Marcius smiles. He did not think the journey would leave him in a good mood. Perhaps it is all down to the youth. He will miss him when they reach their destination. Verus does not know it yet but their paths are soon to diverge, and will cross only one more time. In a world that is not his own.

  For now though, there is no need to spoil the calm with unsavory thoughts. The sailor indulges him: “I told you about the Amphitheater, didn
’t I?”

  “Sure you did…” Verus is wearing the same ecstatic expression he always wears when they talk about the stone titan at the heart of Rome. The dream of two generations of Emperors, about to become reality.

  Marcius is unusually leisurely in his reply. Must be the wine. “No matter how hard you try, knucklehead, no matter how much you can imagine inside that little head of yours, you won’t believe your eyes when you find yourself standing before it. Bigger than anything you’ve ever seen in your whole miserable existence. The Amphitheater is the trunk of the tree of Jupiter, felled with chisels, sweat, mallets, blood, and exhaustion. The ground on which it stands is laced with an infinity of passageways linking it to the gladiator barracks: roots of stone stretching mile upon mile, crafted by countless calloused hands, by eyes lit up by flickering candlelight.”

  Verus is not fond of all this foreign rhetoric, but when Marcius drinks he waxes poetic. And stopping him is practically impossible. The youth tries though, savoring his own persistence: “And what have sails got to do with roots? The trees, Jupiter…”

  Marcius frowns, as he often does when he has to grasp a concept or put some poor wretch back in his place.

  “Damn you and all your kin, living and dead. And wash that mouth out, because it’s the masterpiece of Roman engineering you’re talking about, you witless barbarian!”

  And Verus falls silent, which is only right.

  Wine or no wine, he is still a slave, by the gods!

  Marcius scarcely notices and continues: “Just as trees need roots and leaves, the Amphitheater needs something to shelter it from the sun. Can you imagine how hot it gets in there at the eighth hour of an August day? Fifty thousand people shoulder to shoulder from the early morning, sweating, shouting and urging on the heroes of the arena. The air gets hotter and hotter, no one does their job as well as Apollo, especially in summer. Can you picture it?”

  Not really. Verus barely knows how to count to fifty. Well, he knows numbers higher than fifty, but fifty thousand is truly beyond his grasp. Sixty-two souls used to live in his village. In the quarry he worked alongside a hundred and thirty companions. Along with the guards, there might have been a hundred and fifty. At the port of Misenum there were a lot of people, that was true. But at a guess there were no more than a thousand. Fifty thousand all together is madness. As far as he is concerned, that would be enough to fill the whole world. There is no way the boy is ready for Rome. And yet the Eternal City draws ever closer.